


15.18 Coda

by VerifiablyFalsifiedDocuments



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Coda, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, POV Second Person, until tomorrow anyway....
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:13:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27621202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VerifiablyFalsifiedDocuments/pseuds/VerifiablyFalsifiedDocuments
Summary: You sit, head in your hands, it’s the only thing you can do. Every time, it’s the only thing you can do.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Kudos: 4





	15.18 Coda

The Empty vanishes and you’re alone, still slumped against the wall. Alone in a way that you haven’t been in months, haven’t been since the last time Cas died. More alone now then then, not even a body, no sign that Cas had ever existed at all. Nothing but you and the bloody handprint on your shoulder, slowly drying. You sit, head in your hands, it’s the only thing you can do. Every time, it’s the only thing you can do. Fuck. There shouldn’t be an every time, shouldn’t be enough times that Cas has died for you to have a routine. Last time you’d thought that was it, you’d burned his body on a funeral pyre and tried to follow him. Only. Only then he’d come back, he’d come back alive and whole and unpossessed. Which hadn't always been the case, not that you hadn’t been so goddamn grateful every time he’d returned. Every time it’d felt like maybe this time was it, maybe, the one where he never came back, the one where your luck finally ran out. Getting him back possessed or amnesiac or crazy or cursed or whatever was just part of the deal, something to fix, something that could be fixed. But, that last time, that last time he’d been perfect, alive and reasonably whole and so much himself and you had thought maybe this was the one. The one where he stayed, where you could let him stay. You let him let him pick out a room in the bunker, woke up in the morning knowing that the two people you mattered most were right there. It never seemed like you got them at the same time. Fuck. You’d been so hopeful for a few months, sure the world was ending, sure it turned out everything you’d ever known had been scripted by a weasley little asshole, sure now you had a kid you wanted to shoot half the time because he scared you so damn much, but you were coping. Sam was there and Cas was there and you were there, and that was already leagues above how the last few years had gone, so yeah you were doing good. 

This time though, this time feels truly final, even for you. Cas broke the script. Cas broke the script in the way that he always did, the whole world shifting on the will of one angel. He’d looked at the cards on the table and played one not in the deck. You make yourself think it, that thing that Cas did that wasn’t in the cards, wasn’t on anyone’s bingo sheet. Loved you. He’d loved you. He’d been in love with you. He’d loved you and he’d been in love with you and telling you killed him. You wish he hadn’t told you. You would trade anything for him to not have told you. You knew he loved you. People didn't do the things Cas did, didn’t give up the things he gave up unless they loved the people they were doing them for. And Cas had been so much more than a person, so much more than some human, he’d been an angel. He'd seen the birth of the world, fought in wars beyond your comprehension, a being of pure power and intent, and he’d traded it away. He’d rebelled, fallen, led an army and given it up again, for you. You and Sam and everyone else on earth. Yeah, you knew he loved you, knew it down to your bones, even if you’d never thought about it so much. You didn’t know he was in love with you. Didn’t know that angels could even feel that way, though maybe they couldn’t, maybe that was just another thing Cas did that he wasn’t supposed to. Fuck him, you think. Fuck him for telling you and fuck him for dying before you could yell at him about it. Fuck. You can’t stop thinking it, that he had been in love with you. That he’d been in love with you and being in love with you had cost him everything. You couldn’t even have loved him back. Not in the way he’d wanted at least. You love him, you can admit that, you never said it, never even let yourself think it too loudly but you do love him. You know that much. You know so few things about love, but you know that you love Sam and you love Cas, the only family you’ve really ever had. You could never have been _in_ love with Cas though, the one thing he wanted, the one thing he couldn’t have. His words echo through your head and it hurts more knowing that he was right, hurts to know that he only even told you because he knew that the telling would kill him. He’d known you, known you better than anyone but Sam, and he hadn’t told you. Had instead kept it as one last Hail Mary play, one last card if the situation ever called for it, weaponizing his own misery. You think again, I couldn’t have loved him like that. Surely you couldn’t have, you know what you want in someone, and he wasn’t it. Too male, too strange, how would that even have worked? You’ve kissed plenty of women, fucked plenty too, and none of them were anything like Cas. Cas, who had always been a soldier first and foremost, coldly pragmatic in a way you had never managed to be. Cas, who was hard angled and deep voiced and never properly learned how to tie his tie. The women you dated, back when you had time for things like dating were always beautiful. Long hair and soft curves, they knew how to dress and what to say, and were generally too good for you. Cas had always been awkward, at first it had seemed to be the ignorance of being an angel but even after he’d fallen, after he’d lived and breathed and slept just like everyone else he’d been weird. Just a little too serious, a little too intense, he’d never stopped speaking with the conviction of a warrior of heaven. You never knew if his voice was like that because Jimmy Novak’s voice had sounded like that or if the effect was Cas’s own voice bleeding through. You should have asked him, you think. There are so many things you should have asked him. Always too little too late, every time you get him back it just seems easier to move on, to pretend that the long months you spend drinking and yelling and praying while he’s gone don’t happen. To pretend that losing him didn't get harder and harder every time. 

Even the first time, when Cas had still been just an ally, just a friend, it had hurt to watch Lucifer kill him, had kept hurting even after you lost Sam too. Usually, losing Sam took precedence over anything else, and it had, but there was still that small grief. Grief that kept growing each time Cas died, or was lost, or possessed, grief even when he betrayed you. That was the thing with Cas, even when it felt like you should have stopped caring, when you should have given him up as a lost cause you were never able to do it. Cas, who had been in love with you. For just a minute you try to imagine it, loving Cas like that. You think of your parents, of Sam and Eileen, of Lisa. You try to remember what it had been like, all those years ago, waking up next to her. Unbidden, visions of mornings in the bunker from the last few months swim before you; Sam at the table, constantly researching, Cas, gulping coffee and complaining about the texture of toast. Even Jack, trying so hard to be helpful, to make up for things that weren’t his fault, not really. You can admit that too now, another thing you have to apologize for. The memory calls another sharp stab of grief, somehow you’d gotten used to it. Had gotten used to having Cas be there, had started hoping, in the back of your head that maybe, when this was all over, things just stayed like that. Going on hunts, coming home to the bunker, living a real life. Sam, with Eileen, happy. And Cas, there to stay, there for good, not flitting in and out, always terrible with goodbyes. As soon the thought enters your mind you remember that Cas used to feel frighteningly permanent. He’d pulled you from hell, stamped a brand across your arm and across your ribs and settled into your life whether you’d wanted it or not. And you hadn’t, hadn’t wanted anything to do with angels at all, especially not Cas. Cas who just kept showing up, kept saying he wouldn’t help and then helped anyway. Cas, who had become someone you die for, someone you wanted to stick around for the rest of your life. As you think it, it suddenly sounds almost like a wedding vow; for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, till death would you part. All at once a hundred different memories run through your mind, a hundred small moments where you let yourself think about a future, always with Cas, and the weight of the realization breaks you a second time. A sob echoes through the room and it’s only after it fades away that you realize you’re crying. You’re sobbing like the girl your dad always told you not to be and now that it doesn’t matter, now that he’s gone and none of it will ever matter you let yourself think it for the first time, _I’m in love with Cas._  
You think it again. _I’m in love with Castiel._ Your phone rings, it’s Sam. You don’t pick up.

**Author's Note:**

> Clown hours only. Cannot believe I've been forced back into this hell.


End file.
